BOOK REVIEW
David J. Hand’s The Improbability Principle
Review By Scott Albright
Probabilistically I’m sitting here writing these words,
law of large numbers and the law of selection, the
probability
but just as probabilistically I’m also sitting somewhere else
writing these same words, or even some other words for
that matter. I can be in the same place at the same time,
but can’t I also be present in two times at the same place?
Or present at two times in two places? In extra dimensions I
suppose it’s possible, but in David Hand’s The Improbability
Principle we’re not going beyond the human experience,
which in most cases is only in four
dimensions. This is a good thing for
understanding everyday life, as this
book brings home some basic principles
we need as humans to sharpen our
survival skills.
lever can also create dramatic effects in short periods of
time. Measuring the outcomes may not be so easy
however, as the outcomes may never be as predictable as
one thinks they will be, no matter how refined their
alterations to the probability lever are. Beyond trying to
control the probability lever for survival purposes, one
could also use it to try to change the
outcome of a political election, as I had
considered while writing a piece on the
Bernalillo County Sheriff’s race during
the midterm elections.
First off, there is the law of large
numbers. Let’s begin with that. When it
comes to the likelihood of us dying there
is a good chance it will come from an
automobile accident, heart disease,
cancer, a natural disaster, or some form
of violence. Now there are seven billion
people on this planet. If the majority of
us die from the above mentioned things
than it should be quite obvious that all
we have to do to improve our chances
of living longer is to avoid the things that
cause those forms of death. So that
means no driving or being near cars,
staying away from junk food, cigarettes,
alcohol, and drugs, avoiding areas prone
to natural disasters, and staying away from violent
environments. In doing so we can avoid being another one
of the large numbers statistically proven to meet the
inevitability of death because of the above mentioned
things. That brings us to what I think is the second most
important point of The Improbability Principle - the
probability lever.
Manipulating the lever can change the outcome of
events by means of the butterfly effect. Small changes can
have large effects over long durations. When mixed with the
After writing the article, in which I
thought it was nearly impossible not to
use the law of selection to provide
information which made one candidate
seem more favorable than the other, I
asked my friend to read the article and
to tell me who he would vote for based
on what I had written. To my surprise he
picked the exact opposite person whom
I thought he would. Clearly my
understanding of the law of selection
was wrong. Or was it? As it turned out,
the person I thought was going to win
based on the information I had available
to me, did indeed win the election. But
how am I to kn